


The Schemes of Heimdallr

by coplins



Series: Packrunners [36]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Addiction, Gore, Interspecies Relationship(s), M/M, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Scent Marking, Scents & Smells, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-06 03:23:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16380464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coplins/pseuds/coplins
Summary: Dean's finally cleared things up with Marlon (kinda) and goes straight to share it with someone special to him.





	The Schemes of Heimdallr

**Author's Note:**

> My wonderful Beta [YouCantKeepMeDown](http://archiveofourown.org/users/YouCantKeepMeDown) presented me with a headcanon for Benny that I decided to make canon with a small tweak. But to do that I needed to shift POV, hence you're now looking through the eyes of Sasha, a species less alike Dean's than he appears to be. On the other hand, we'll get some answers to what really happened in the Dick Roman story in the alley after Peter killed his pack. :)
> 
> Sasha knows a lot of stuff because he's experienced it, but he's not knowledgeable about the science behind stuff in the same way our college boys are which makes it a bit harder to convey to you. Feel free to ask me questions if something was unclear. I've left some details out to clear it later in a scene between Mike and Sasha, but if the answer won't be covered there I'd love to tell you more. Also, I added a long note on religion at the bottom.

* * *

There’s a knock on the door. Sasha frowns and grabs his gun out of the holster. He goes to the door and pushes a button on the panel beside it to activate the camera. A bluish, monochrome picture appears in the small screen in the panel. Sasha relaxes and holsters his gun again. He pushes another button to get heat vision, revealing an image that almost makes him purr appreciatively when he sees his visitor’s heightened body temperature, promising for an interesting visit. He pushes another button to open the air intake so he can get a whiff. He’s almost disappointed that his visitor is still hours or maybe a full day from being in Heat. It’s not a fever, though, his nose tells him that, but it also tells him something else that’s equally interesting since Dean isn’t supposed to have his Heat until about a week and a half from now. He shuts off the camera and slides the cover over the panel mostly for aesthetic reasons, then he opens the door.

Dean shoulders his way past him dragging his hand over the doorpost as he passes. Sasha almost laughs out loud. He closes the door, turns around and leans his back against it while putting his hands in his pockets, watching the cheeky O walk around in his apartment marking it up, claiming it.

If Dean thinks this will provoke Sasha he’s sorely mistaken. Apart from the wonderful pre-Heat scent spreading in the open-plan space, this is a great development. His plans are coming together all by themselves, taking a different route that will lead to the same end. But plans or no plans, to his kind, a home isn’t as sacred as it is for these wolfcat descendants. Not unless there are cubs or Omegas in Heat present but then you defend those, not the home itself. Michael is a problem still. A problem, because his heart goes soft and weak with every moment spent with the young Alpha. It makes him vulnerable which he hates. The Main currently claiming his liar―and by proxy, claiming him with it―has also wormed his way into his heart to a startling degree considering how dead he thought his heart had become, to begin with. It’s far from dead. The memory of affectionately washing the blood of Dean’s face just to get a surprise kiss still makes his heart hiccup. He hasn’t shared a kiss with anyone for decades. Fuck, but he really wanted to keep going. But he couldn’t. Not yet. He unfolds his hollow fangs―the very reason he couldn’t allow Dean to lick into his mouth―pumps some liquid into them and presses them onto the roof of his mouth with his tongue. It stings when they reopen the self-inflicted wounds and penetrate the cracks in the protective plate meant to separate the immune parts of his body from the ones receptive to the liquid’s influence. The pain-numbing, sedating effect with its euphoric undertones is instant, hiding every chronic pain from awareness except the pulsating ache in the broken protective plate.

Anyone of his kind would smell it on him at first whiff, know what he was doing and most likely avoid him thinking him weak and mentally unsound. These strangers, not so much. They took his foreign smell as a marker of him not being from around here. But other Siberians would know better. In his youth, he would’ve curled his lip in disgust at someone like himself. However, he’s alive today because of his shortcoming, his addiction.

Of course, they don’t call themselves ‘Siberians’. Siberia is a name on somebody else’s map. They’re the Offspring of Heimdallr. It's the others who dubbed them Siberians. Sasha hasn't caught whiff of another of his kind in a _very_ long time. He has smelled crossbreed descendants, however. He isn't the only one of his kind to love strangers. But someone else has been lucky to have seen their offspring survive and proliferate, unlike him. Dean had a faint tone of that when they first met. It wasn't his own scent, no, it came from someone else. Sasha had started researching that the moment Dean called him, showing an interest of keeping in contact. The scent Sasha had smelt came from the owner of Dean's apartment, Benny Lafitte. It hadn't taken too long to find the guy and find out that he was three generations removed from an offspring of Heimdallr. More digging had led to disappointment. Benny's Siberian foremother had been killed in a shipwreck.

Getting to Benny without him knowing had been harder. Mick Davies and a small team had posed as oil rig inspectors. Later Mick had shared a bottle of whiskey with Benny bonding over Omegas they were pining for. Naturally, Benny's drink had been laced. Then, when Benny was unconscious Sasha had a chance to examine him. Crossbreeds can end up inheriting any trait from either bloodline and could have weird mutations. Benny's blood was thinned but he still bore traits that were undoubtedly Siberian in their origin, albeit mutated. An extra set of small, hollow flat fangs, but hidden outside in the gums rather than on the inside of the teeth. He didn't seem to be able to produce any liquid or venom, but pressing a finger to them got the sucking going strongly. Sasha had jerked his finger back. Unless the poor guy had the hunger already it would be an infinitely bad idea to wake it up with human blood. You will imprint on your first full meal and Sasha had no design to turn Benny into what fairytales dubbed a vampire.

More digging had supplied that Benny used to be a pirate in his youth but a too soft heart and too strong morals led to him to go straight and these days to work on the oil rig. Sasha lost interest.

Dean, however… “I guess you took my advice, pretty Omega," Sasha says with a small smirk.

"Yup.” Dean stops rubbing his temple against the kitchen cabinets and makes a beeline towards Sasha. He presses himself against Sasha and rubs his temple gland against Sasha's cheek.

Sasha chuckles and tilts his head up so Dean can reach better to mark up his throat (and mark himself up with the secretion Sasha's leaking while he's at it). “I think he got mad, no?"

“You bet your ass," Dean agrees with a shiteating grin.

"But he didn't hurt you," Sasha states trying to tone down how pleased he is by the hint of a new mating bond in Dean's scent. It's on the wrong side of perceivable for the wolfcat descendants―much, much fainter than Dean's brother had when Sasha picked him up in the Hales territory―but it’s there along with the scent of a horny Alpha all over Dean. In the beginning, the way these strangers formed scent bonds confused him. He, like many of his kind, had believed they ran in these enormous packs where everyone bonded to everyone they met and they never ever hid their scent. Ever. Plus they had sex however, wherever, with whoever. (There wasn’t a single Siberian Sasha had known that hadn’t gone ‘Hey, we should take a page out of their playbook on that’ when they saw it.) It had taken quite a while to figure out that the strangers bonded differently. It’s like their scent made a small handshake as soon as it came in contact with someone else’s secrete, trying out if there was a match. To a Siberian’s nose, a ‘good enough’ smelled like a bond, but to the stranger more is needed. ‘Good enough’ could change into an actual bond if it was steepled in friendship turned to love, but most often it remained nothing. If it was a great match the result was different. A ‘Yes, we can bond’ (Or in Dean’s case, a ‘Fuck yeah! Let’s do this thing!’) would alter the scents a little bit in both people, making a real bond more likely to form. That’s what he smelled on Michael and Dean at the movie theater and that’s what he’s smelling now. But the strangers can’t smell it yet. (Although, if a triggered Heat isn’t hitting them with the clue bus, he has no idea what would.)

Sasha had been fucking smug about being able to smell these connections, thinking his sense of smell was far superior, until one person with a relatively crappy (but far from noseblind) sense of smell was able to not only smell disease on someone but figure out what it was with an eerie ease. Same with Dean telling him about the first meeting with his mate Castiel - ‘We could smell the cancer on him.’ (Fucking _how?_ ) The best a Siberian could do in most cases was ‘Yup. He’s sick. Probably.’ So no, not superior, just different. He’s had a very long time to figure out the differences and learn how to make use of it.

“Define hurt,” Dean bids with an almost dreamy grin. 

“Whatever makes you not happy.”

Dean laughs and rubs their necks together. Sasha clips his scent on and off to hide most of the emotional (and physical) impact the affection has on him. Dean’s started to call him out on it when he hides his scent, but if he does a quick succession of a mental squeeze-and-release Dean doesn’t notice and it tones down how obvious his feelings are to the world. He’s been asked to teach people how to do that in the past which is fucking impossible. It’s like being asked to teach someone how to bend a finger or open an eye. It’s not something you learn, you just do. “The fucker went straight for the throat, figuratively. Like, ‘Oh yeah? You have a weak spot? I’m gonna jab at it.’ But it’s okay cuz I fucking deserved it. I more or less went straight like this,” Dean says and turns on his heel heading for the bed. He pulls off his shirt, unbuttons his pants and kicks off his shoes as he goes then all but nosedives onto the bed to roll around in it rubbing his glands all over the sheets and pillows. When Dean lies on his back and wiggles to rub the gland at the base of his neck against the pillow Sasha doesn’t bother to hide that it turns him on. That gland―one that his kind doesn’t have―produces the same chemicals he does in his fangs. It’s not the only liquid he can produce there but it’s the one connected to sex, impregnation, and mating bonds. He’ll burrow his nose in that pillow and hump the mattress until he comes tonight. Or maybe he’ll only wait until his young Main has left. He’s just a man after all and self-discipline only goes so far.

It’s always been startling to him how bad these strangers are at telling close relatives apart. Not all families smell alike. Sometimes even siblings smell so different they could appear unrelated. But in cases like the Williams brood or Sam and Dean, few can tell them apart from scent. To him, it’s different. Sam and Dean smell like night and day. In the Williams brood only Michael smells like heaven. Not true. Marlon also has a gorgeous scent but the Patriarch is the problem.

They’ve met. Marlon showed up at the office solely to meet him after he had let Michael siphon him. The man was courteous and polite, by all means, but _oh_ so suspicious. One wrong move and Sasha will be chased off the territory before he’s got his hooks in. ‘ _I do believe I’ve encountered your kind before._ ’ ‘ _My kind, Sir?_ ’ ‘ _My son tells me you’re a Siberian. Pardon my bluntness but your kinds’ scent is very unique. I’ve smelt it before during the war, fighting in the Canadian mountains._ ’ It’s fucking unfortunate because a Siberian doesn’t have this smell unless their body is infused by their own venom like Sasha’s, so with 99% certainty, Marlon had smelt _him_ since he was working for the other side at the time. As a mercenary, you go where you’re paid. But then the American government had pulled that bullshit on Packrunners and not even Sasha’s morals were so low he could be part of taking advantage of that. So he’d taken his team at the time back to Europe to fuck things up for Progs for a while, then returned to North America with refugees in his cargo for an extended vacation away from active war zones.

Sasha purrs his appreciation for Dean’s antics.

Dean sniggers and sits up to look at him. “You think I’m pretty, right?”

“Very?”

“Scent or looks?”

“Both. Why you ask?”

“Sam’s fucking weird. So yesterday we passed this hot guy on the street. Fucker was gorgeous, I’m telling you. And I said so to Sam too, right? But Sam gives me this snooty look and goes, ‘Dean. He’s _round_ ’,” Dean says and makes a spherical gesture with his hands mimicking his little brother’s response. “I don’t get what’s wrong with Sam. What does it matter how someone looks like anyway?” he adds in bemusement.

“Eyy. Nothing wrong with aesthetics matching the scent, you get what I’m sayin?” Sasha sniggers. He was once like Dean and let his nose tell him everything he needed to know to be attracted to someone. And back on the tundra, a fat person was extra attractive since it directly correlated to their ability to thrive in a harsh climate. Monetary wealth and city living threw all of that on its end. A fat person could be as weak and unhealthy as a skinny person could be thriving. It had taken him a long time to readjust his basic attraction to favour a certain physique. He still doesn’t care much for the faces of people. Although, to him, Michael might have the most beautiful face he’s come across since… he doesn’t remember the last time.

Dean stares into nothing for a while. “No... not really. When I think someone’s hot I find their looks hot too no matter how they look, but a good looking face or body loses its attraction to me if the scent is wack.”

Sasha pulls a sturgeon face and shrugs a shoulder. It’s true. You see someone on a photo, TV, or a painting and you think they’re gorgeous, but if you meet them and their scent doesn’t match, they no longer appear as pretty as they seemed.

“Sash… Do you think I look prettier like this? Or like this?” Dean lets his beautiful fur grow and starts shifting a few features. The white and black lines under his eyes make them so beautiful Sasha’s heart skips a beat every time he pelts. It’s been a long time since an Omega has pelted or shifted for him. Not since he left Norway where the Offspring of Gere and Freke to this day shifted as often as easily as ever. ‘Nordic Scand’. It’s a joke. Draw a map, name a place and name the people living there after the names you just made up. Instead of taking into account who they are and what they do. People can move and stay the same while places change depending on the inhabitants.

“To me, you look the prettiest like you did when we hunted,” Sasha offers honestly.

“So you’ve got a shifting kink?”

“Pfft. Shifting kink?” Sasha frowns and his annoyance translates to his scent. “Do I have a sex kink? An Omega kink? A naked kink?”

“Those are not kinks,” Dean states, still standing with one foot firmly placed in societal convention and another in nature.

Sasha pushes off from the door and approaches, shifting far too quickly while he walks and yet again pressing his fangs into the roof of his mouth pumping his venom into his bloodstream to dull the pain from the quick skeletal shift. He can make large shifts completely painlessly without it, but not this fast. He needs about 15 minutes for a full shift. Or as full as he’s ever felt compelled to try. Now he doesn’t shift that much, just enough to make him look more like an animal than human to these strangers who have decided one form is human and the other isn’t. He takes a springy leap onto the bed (boasting his vigor to the pre-Heat Omega on his bed), stands above Dean with feet wide apart, then drops so Dean has to flop back not to get headbutted. He stands on all fours above Dean looking down at him. It’s playful and Dean’s warm grin shows he gets that. “Why is the man I look at in the mirror every morning a kink to you? I look at you when we hunted, I see equal. Why is equal a kink?”

Dean’s eyes, so gorgeously green even when he isn’t flaring, go soft. In many ways, he reminds Sasha of the first wolfcat descendant he ever saw shifted. Chained up naked in a cage and beaten or whipped if he tried to shift into human form, carted around like a spectacle and shown off like a monster. The young Alpha’s constant distress call for his pack had gotten to Sasha. His older brother who’d snuck into the Prog camp with him had seen it on him. ‘ _Don’t be a dumb cub, little brother. He’s the same as them, Offspring of Loki,_ ,’ he’d admonished. But Sasha couldn’t let it go. He was so beautiful with his triangular face, ruddy fur with golden belly and facial markings, eyes flaring green like the budding leaves in spring. But he was so young, reeking of distress and terror. That night Sasha went back and found the cage. The young Alpha growled at him, pressing himself against the bars of the opposite side of the cage, terrified. Sasha purred soothingly at him and shifted partially to show they were alike. Back then his own scent didn’t stand out setting him apart as it does now. He hadn’t fallen yet. Still, the mistake he did was releasing his scent for a minute so the stranger could smell his friendly intentions. The so-called Progs weren’t dumb, they had trackers. To his knowledge, the young Alpha with face and eyes reminding of Dean’s got away, but the Progs had trackers that caught the scent of one of Sasha’s markings close by his home and recognised it from their camp… Sasha will accept that perhaps wolfcat descendants like Dean are the Offspring of Loki, but never the Progs. Never.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Dean says softly.

Sasha lays down on top of him so he can stroke his soft fur and carefully card his claws through it. When he does it when Dean is furless Dean’s small hairs stand on end, but fully pelted? He puffs up like a fluffy chicken or a hamster. “My kink is looking, I think,” Sasha admits. “Like you and your pretty Alpha mate at movies. I like very much. Is good. Sex… I like basic. Like the old days on tundra.”

“Would you tell me about it? About yourself when you grew up? Like, did you have a big pack? What were you like when you were young? Did you really hunt mammoths?”

Sasha chuckles. “We hunted mammoths but if we were lucky we make symbiose with them, protecting them.”

“What do you mean, ‘make symbiose’?”

“They are big and reproduce slow. We reproduce slow too. Us and them both nomads. So sometimes herds learn that sticking around a pack and giving us food will make us protect them from other packs that would kill.”

“What? Like milk and stuff?”

“And stuff, mostly,” Sasha smirks. It wasn’t just protection that would make a herd stick around. He remembers the first time a mammoth hesitantly held out its trunk to free-willingly let him bite and inject it with the venom that’d make it high and blissfully sedate while he drank his belly full of its blood. It was euphoria for both the mammoth and him. A rhino would never stand for this and had to be hunted and killed. But elephants? No matter the breed they were smart enough to figure out that a predatory species could be an ally, and dumb enough to become addicts. Plus they had a lot of blood. An adult Siberian could drink about 10 liters in a few minutes and not have to eat for one or two weeks. It wasn’t even 4% of the blood the big animals had. A human has barely 5 liters in their body and only 30-40% blood loss could be fatal. And that’s just taking normal bleeding into account. Add someone draining them with force, preferably with a bite in the jugular to prevent blood from reaching the brain and you could kill someone in seconds and get a snack out of it while leaving such nondescript bitemarks they got overlooked. Another testament to the degradation he’s fallen into. You don’t ever eat your own kind. Some of his kin hadn’t counted wolfcat descendants as their own kind, calling them mere animals. But when Sasha looked into the eyes of that chained green-eyed shifter he saw kin. Same as he sees kin in the green eyes staring up at him now. A soft sun cub, perhaps, but the bar is set high for that definition for somebody like Sasha who’s been fighting in wars for a _very_ long time. “I am big for my kind also,” he tells Dean. “We were generally bigger than your kind. Your size is our average. Women, men, not look much different. We look, what’s the word, андрогин?” He smacks his lips in annoyance at not finding the English word. Language is a weak spot for him. Primal language isn’t a problem, he picks up local variations with ease, but spoken language is another matter. He’s been speaking English for a very long time and still it’s hard to remember words. He only knows two spoken languages well and both he’d learned as a cub. He knows words in many languages having lived in many places for long periods, but nothing seems to stick properly aside from his mother-tongue and Arabic.

“Androgynous?” Dean asks.

“Да. No. Perhaps not right. Woman look much more like man. Small hips, small breast, tall, much strong.”

“So both chicks and dudes looked masculine?”

“Да. I was big, strong, smart, undisciplined, and believed in myself too much. To the point where smart turns dumb, if you get what I’m sayin?”

Dean smiles, flashing those beautiful white teeth of his. “Yeah, I do. You thought you could pull things off you probably shouldn’t have tried in the first place and it got you into trouble, right?”

“Yes. I am stunted. Have handicap? A sense your kind lacks, but in me is weak. So I always wanted to prove myself. Look here,” he says and points to the black of his scleras while toning down the brightness of his flare. “You see it?”

Dean squints with a concentrated frown. “It looks like a row of miniature pupils?” he answers uncertainly. The four small dots, two on either side of the iris, have their own miniature corneas and are next to invisible. They only open when he flares.

“Yes. Like little eyes but different. Is for seeing heat, yeah? But we all emit heat so body must shield these pits from our own heat. My shields are weak making like seeing heat-fog. Is still good enough to see prey in snow, but not so good. My kin thought me less so I prove them I am better.”

“ _Dude_ , that’s awesome!” Dean’s eyes flare brightly in excitement.

Sasha chuckles. He usually doesn’t tell people details about what makes Siberians differ and certainly not that he amongst his own kind had counted as a cripple. But Dean knowingly mated the noseblind Williams without preamble before anyone else. He’s drawn to the different and won’t count a stunted sense as a reason to opt out. Besides, heat vision isn’t nearly as strange as some of the quirks you found in the Offspring of Ægir with their bright colour-shifts, gills, cold skin, or indeed, their tentacles. Those people living on remote islands in the sea could differ from one island to another and in some cases scared the living shit out of Sasha. One form of them―the ones with cold skin―he wasn’t even sure were human, but they lived under the sea and may very well be the root to fairy tales about mermaids and sirens. He wishes Dean wasn’t so obsessed with the tentacles. If he wasn’t, Sasha might have told him about all these extraordinary human races that could be found in the world, about meeting them in his search for other surviving Siberians (or in his need to disappear for a while). But Dean has a certain drive, a fire. If he could cross the country just to find an Alpha he’d spent a Heat with many (to him) years ago, what wouldn’t he do to find a tentacled Alpha? Sasha fucking hates water. He thinks he swims well enough, but anytime he’s been on a trail of a possible surviving Siberian, if they hadn’t been killed by war their cause of death was always the same; drowning. 

He goes on talking. “I make big things happen for pack before even presenting. I made friends with mammoth herd and brought to pack. I drive off intruders. I explore wider than most. That was mistake. When I present, I was Alpha. I thought myself a grown man, not boy like I still was. So I fight off competition and put cub in Omega’s belly. I was proud. Very proud. My Patriarch? Not impressed. My son was two when they came to our home. I was too far away exploring to hear the pack distress call. I should have been closer. We already knew the strangers were around. I lost my pack for my pride.” Trackers. Saving that green-eyed son of Loki had cost him dearly. He didn’t blame the young, green-eyed Alpha, though. He blamed the strangers that had chained him up to begin with. The strangers who attacked and killed the most vulnerable in the pack first - cubs, pregnant Omegas. Who skinned the bodies and left the dead to rot. Who captured and tortured anyone who shifted out of their pelts. The strangers who shot from afar and who were many, so fucking many.

Dean looks horrified to the point of smelling of physical pain.

“No, no. It’s a very long time ago, pretty Omega. I have grieved and moved on,” Sasha assures his with a soothing breastbone purr, petting him to calm him down. “Is sort of the same as happen for your scentless friend. But he was sent away to be kept safe. I was supposed to keep safe, if you get what I’m sayin?”

“That’s fucking horrible, man. I so fucking sorry. I hope you got revenge.”

“No…” Sasha answers with a sigh. “Sometimes, you lose. It is life. But perhaps I was revenged by Heimdallr? I was in Preußen―”

“Proisson? Where the hell is that?”

Sasha makes a face. Sometimes he has trouble remembering the names of countries. Places change names over time. Dean is well read but he’s like Sasha, not cluttering his brain up with useless facts and instead focussing on the practical things. The brother, Sam, would probably know and try to date Sasha’s age if he was honest like this, saying the names of places as they’ve been called when he was there. The city he’d been in, Königsberg, had another name these days and Preußen was no longer a country. Sasha shrugs. “Places change names. I was in a port city on the southeastern corner of the Baltic Sea, if that helps? News reached the city of terrible disease where I came from. Killing many. So maybe we were revenged by the god that is our father? But disease was spreading so I take work on ship and left for Alkebulan. I think, Africa to you, yeah? They have their own names on things. Since then I’ve travelled. Stayed in place for times, then go to new place to make new money. Heart was broken and mind can’t ever leave battlefield. So I go to battlefields where my talents lie, you get what I’m sayin? To enemy I am demon. Grrr.”

Dean laughs at his silly parodic growl but then turns serious, scent turning anxious. “You won’t leave me, will you? It would break my heart.”

Sasha has to hide his scent in a rapid-fire clipping to tone down how it happy-sad-nervous that makes him. “If I leave, I come back to you,” he promises.

“Or I could come with you?” Green eyes so big and hopeful. Dean’s got a nomad's heart. His brother not so much, Sasha thinks, even if they seem to share a curiosity about the world. But deep down Dean wants to roam. He gets excited by everything new and different and is eager to explore. Somebody asks ‘Where does that road lead?’ and Dean will immediately trot down that road to find out. It’s different than Omega wanderlust that is an uncomfortable feeling of unrest (or so he’s been told). In a way, it’s a tragedy that Dean presented so early and was flung into the role of a Main. He more or less skipped his Juviehood and went straight for the greatest responsibilities. He’s doing a great job with what he’s been given, there’s no denying that. But his mind is always moving either to fix something for his pack or wandering off on dreamy adventures. As long as there’s some kind of strife for his pack, Dean will stay put. But what happens when everything’s stable, running itself like a good pack does? That could be a problem. He foresees it to be. And when the day comes Sasha won’t leave Dean’s side for a minute. But he’s not going to tell him that.

“No. You stay here. Your pack needs you.” Sasha shuffles to lie on his side beside him and Dean flips to lie on his side too, supporting his head in his hand.

For a moment they just lay looking at each other, then Dean speaks. “What happened to ‘When your reddy I pot cob in your bellie’? You’re not gonna abandon me with your kit, are you?”

“No. Never,” Sasha promises and pulls Dean close to hold him. He’d been at the movie theater that day to get some peace and quiet. Finding the most beautiful couple he’d seen in a long time getting frisky had not been his plan, nor falling for the two of them upon getting to know them. A man who’s lonely long enough will find love where it’s offered. He’d seen it on the tundra. Outcasts not welcome in any pack, falling for and living out their lives monogamously mated to the snowtiger that loved them. Often these outcasts would one day disappear. Sasha believes that maybe they managed the ultimate shift and no longer had a reason to shift back. Other thought they died. But until the day came that someone shifted back to tell the tale it would remain a mystery. There were whispers of this happening amongst the direwolves too but it’s the same - nobody knew for sure. Sasha is a social creature. He enjoys his privacy, but not loneliness. He’s found love with wolfcat descendants and had families over the years but war always dances in his footsteps, leaving him to love and lose over and over. It’s long since he felt the fire in his heart the two at the cinema had awoken. He’d thought it long dead, but yet again it’s burning bright. Maybe this time it’ll work and he’ll be able to shield the chosen pack from the call to battle from the Gjallarhorn? Somehow, he doubts it. Bet he’ll try. “Now, no more me. Tell me how it went with the Patriarch. Good, yes?”

Dean grins. “Yeah, alright. So I went there and did what you said, right? When he opened the door I shouldered my way inside not even waiting for a hello. I…” He goes on to tell Sasha in great detail what happened while Sasha listens and purrs his contentment…

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> I've chosen to include religion that exists in our world in this verse rather than make up a completely new mythos and groups of gods for the different cultures (although, there might still pop up made up gods here and there). However, I'm borrowing willy-nilly and disregarding our 'canon' mythos as I seem fit.
> 
> In this part we get to see someone who believes in Norse gods. Sasha's main god is Heimdallr, a norse god who guards the rainbow bridge to the realm of the gods. He has a horn he'll blow in to warn when Ragnarök is coming. Quote from Wikipedia "Heimdallr is attested as possessing foreknowledge, keen eyesight and hearing, and keeps watch for invaders and the onset of Ragnarök..."  
> For those of you who know Sasha from other stories might remember that Heimdallr Security (Sasha's company here) has been mentioned in connection with him before. Why I've chosen Heimdallr for him? 'Sasha' and 'Alexandr' both mean 'Defender of man or mankind'. In his original canon he's a servant/warrior for very powerful people (considering themselves equal to gods) that he ultimately chooses to betray for love. I like the idea of a vigilant god standing between two worlds set to guard in one direction but switching to defend those he guards against. That certainly doesn't regard Norse canon though. But I can see why the hardy Siberians with their often supreme senses living under a sky with northern lights would see themselves as offspring of this god.
> 
> I chose Loki for the god they have representing our wolfcat descendants. Loki and Heimdallr are destined to kill each other at Ragnarök, but since neither Sasha nor Dean believes in destiny, that's not important beyond perhaps that Sasha's people were indeed killed by people evolving from wolfcats.
> 
> So we all know Loki is a trickster, which correlates well with the inventiveness of wolfcats, making tools, traps, inventing machines and so on and so forth. Loki was also fairly happy to sleep with practically anything if you look at his offspring. He fathered Fenrir the wolf, a snake, and gave birth to an eight-legged horse. He's also a shapeshifter, which is why Sasha has trouble accepting Progs as offspring of Loki despite having the same origin as Dean and other Packrunners.  
> Ægir is also mentioned and he's a creature that rules the sea.  
> Freke and Gere are wolves.
> 
> As for places mentioned and Sasha's shifty memory of them I did have a look at old maps (although, I'm not very particular about our reality lining up with theirs). During my 38 years of life, I've seen countries change names, divide and become one. Sasha has lived a lot longer than I. I found the perfect gif to demonstrate why he might have problems pinpointing where he's been when talking about it. :)


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